Architect's Vision for a New Building

“You’ve got to have a dream, if you want to have a dream come true” is a lyric from the musical South Pacific. The dream for – the grand vision, really – for the Columbus Chapel and Boal Mansion Museum was first developed during the Columbus 500th in the 1990’s, when we had Joe Paterno, Supreme Court Justice Roy Wilkinson and other luminaries on our 500th board.

What if…we had a new building nestled into the hillside between the Columbus Chapel and the carriage house. That building could serve

to receive visitors and organize them for guided tours,

to house the administrative function of the museum so it would conflict less with the residential function of the Mansion building,

to display the items now in the three rough outbuildings on either side of the carriage house and

to store and also display the many interesting items now stored away in the many trunks in the attic of the Mansion?

What if…this building also served

as a place for scholarly research and

as a visitors’ center for the entire Boalsburg experience, with maps of the area and coordinated information about all three museums, the shops, the restaurants and everything of interest to students, visitors and scholars alike?

What if…positive minded people got together to make this happen and they called this “The Boalsburg Heritage Center” and it became the keystone of a newly organized Pennsylvania Heritage District such as exist in other parts of the state? Now that would be real service to the community on a grand scale.

These visions got a little push forward in 2012 when architect Philip Foreman of Zelienople, Pennsylvania, helped to help flesh out such a vision. The drawings below are by his office and help visualize what such a building would be like.

The price tag? Oh, something like $75 million. Now who would fund such a thing?